Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to archery equipment. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a tip for archery arrows.
Background Information
The primary functional part of an archery arrow is the arrowhead. Sport archers and modern bow hunters are accustomed to referring to arrowheads as “tips.” The tip is attached to an arrow shaft to be shot from a bow. In modern archery arrows, the tip may be fastened to the arrow shaft by means of a tang that fits into a hole that is co-linear with the central longitudinal axis of the shaft.
There are a number of different tip types corresponding to the different uses for archery arrows. In hunting, for example, broadhead tips are sometimes used, particularly when hunting larger game animals such as deer. Field tips are used almost exclusively for practice. Because field tips are slender and pointed, they are able to traverse their flight path without generating a great deal of air resistance, striking their targets while conserving velocity and momentum due to their aerodynamic properties.
For hunting small game, blunt tips are often used. The functional objective of a blunt tip is to kill the target through blunt force trauma inflicted by the flat front of the blunt tip. A blunt tip may also be designed to penetrate the target, piercing and tearing soft tissues in its path.
Conventional blunt tips may flare out at the front portion to form a wider striking surface in order to deliver more shock to the target. The faces of some conventional blunt tips may exceed ½″ in diameter. The shape and mass of most conventional tips is such that they tend to increase air resistance and decrease the amount of lift acting on the arrow as it traverses the flight path. Thus, while any arrow loses momentum and accelerates toward the earth during flight, this behavior may be amplified in arrows equipped with blunt tips. For this reason, the effectiveness of conventional blunt tips is highly dependent on the strength and skill of the archer. While blunt tips are effective when used by a sufficiently skilled archer, in the hands of an archer of less skill they frequently fall short of their target, or they may bounce off of the target. Even if they strike the target, they may not strike with sufficient momentum to inflict a lethal injury on the target.
An archer of sufficient skill and strength is able to compensate, at least partially, for the handicap imposed by the size and mass of the conventional blunt tip by launching the arrow toward its target with sufficient momentum and at an appropriately chosen launch angle so that the arrow hits its target with sufficient force to inflict lethal damage to the target. Archers having less skill often experience great frustration using arrows equipped with blunt tips.
Manufacturers have produced different types of blunt tip to compensate for some of the design flaws inherent to conventional blunt tips. Various surface features, for example have been added to the face of the tip, which are designed to minimize the possibility of the arrow bouncing off of the target, or to concentrate the impact of the tip. There are tips that have been provided with a cutting edge to increase the possibility of the tip inflicting lethal injury on the target and so on. However, none of the improvements to the tip, to date, address the suboptimal aerodynamic properties of the tip.